Star Corona

George W. Hart



This 8-inch, diameter, one-of-a-kind, acrylic sculpture consists of an inner red star surrounded by a yellow corona. It is designed to hang and the two components do not touch each other. The star has twelve large 5-sided spikes and twenty smaller 3-sided spikes, all assembled from sixty identical angular components. The corona is assembled from twenty identical curved components, which give the effect of swirling motion. If you look straight down on a spike, you see that arms from five of the yellow parts combine to make a circle around the spike, as in the image below:

 

Both components are based on stellations of the icosahedron. The outer corona is based on the first stellation and the inner star shape is based on number 53 in the list by Coxeter et al. If you want to understand it well, I suggest making a paper model from the instructions given on this page. Each of the sixty parts makes up part of a large 5-sided spike and a small 3-sided spike. In the plexiglas sculpture, the parts were laser-cut with two openings, making for a very rich and intricate interior, which is hard to capture in a photo. 



This computer-rendered model of the star gives a good sense of its structure. A high-res image shows some of the fine details.

Copyright 2004, George W. Hart